John Huston

[therewillbeblus]

Under the Volcano was massively disappointing because it had the makings of a great performance from Albert Finney, potentially his best, but as the film went on, it too felt emptier and emptier.

I don’t like the film either, but I’ve always found it to be repelling by design, deliberately depriving us of any cinematic flairs of catharsis beyond that emptiness you describe, due to the stark portrait of alcoholism. The choices that contribute to making it feel “emptier and emptier” emulate the slip into complete submission, so I consider it to be an objectively great film at unflinchingly tackling the hopeless side of addiction via narrative form, but I probably like it less than anyone I’ve met- partly because it’s not an enjoyable film and partly because I rarely have an interest in films on addiction that are whittled down to one-way tickets to hell.

In my early days on this forum, I wrote up a long piece on Wise Blood after finally reading the novel and revisiting the film, but lost it (or self-consciously deleted it, either are possible). Unfortunately I’d need to reread the book to adequately describe why I think the film adaptation is so strong, but even its detractors should check out Flannery O’Connor’s book. It’s better, and has a lot more subtext unable to come through in the film, yet this information greatly helps appreciate the adaptation. If I remember correctly, even though a ton of stuff is omitted but the film, it’s still a meticulously faithful adaptation to everything except the missing pieces- and the awareness of those elements reveal blind spots on the finished Huston work.

[domino harvey]

O'Connor in many of her celebrated short stories is highly skilled at presenting the grotesque, whereas I think Huston has a prurient interest with such things that comes out in films like this. So I can believe it. Though it's pretty low on my reading list based on the film regardless!

[JSC]

I think Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison is an underrated film. It has it's flaws, but it's also an anomaly for large scale 1950s productions, a film with basically two characters, a minimal score, and largely episodic in structure. Reportedly Robert Mitchum's favorite of his own performances.

[Mr Sausage]

What bizarre critical principle says that a great artist isn’t defined by their capacity to produce art that’s great, but their incapacity to produce any that’s bad?

Being able to produce even a handful of terrific art is a rare, difficult, and laudable thing, and what a shame to see a pair of cranks devalue that work and its maker by pointing out everything that isn’t on the same level.

This is auteurism at its worst. Can you imagine the absurdities of applying it outside film? William Wordsworth had a great decade at the beginning of the 19th century where he helped change the face of English poetry and then spent the remainder of his long life writing middling-to-bad poetry. So he’s out then. Only people ignorant of his whole career would call him great, the morons. Why, if you took out all the immortal and revolutionary poetry, he’d be no better than a poet who’d never wrote immortal and revolutionary poetry. So Wordsworth is clearly no better than Robert Southey, says this not at all circular reasoning.

And let’s not get started in Coleridge, that drug addled depressive. Delete his 7 or 8 immortal poems and he’s just some philosopher with a small poetry habit.

Or let’s take the second best poet in English, John Milton. Remove Paradise Lost, Comus, and three or four shorter poems and is he really any better than, oh, Abraham Cowley? Just the writer of a heap of undistinguished short verse, a forgettable minor epic, and an alright verse drama. Great poet? Only fools ignorant of his whole career could blah blah blah.

And Melville? Bulwer-Lytton more like it without that whale book. Only fucking ignoramuses barely above semi-literate could blah blah blah.

What kind of critics don’t celebrate the miracle that someone managed to make great art at all, given the odds against it, in favour of counting up someone’s career in a kind of ledger, like a pair of old ladies competing to maximize their coupon purchases? Also, the ‘an artist seems bad if you pretend their good stuff doesn’t exist’ argument is so...just...goddamn...ughhhhh.

[domino harvey]

I think Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison is an underrated film. It has it's flaws, but it's also an anomaly for large scale 1950s productions, a film with basically two characters, a minimal score, and largely episodic in structure. Reportedly Robert Mitchum's favorite of his own performances.

I like it too, it might make the lower depths of my own dozen. Not an amazing film, but a sweet non-romance that resists the Hollywood impulse to have Deborah Kerr ignore who she is in that moment

[JSC]

I like it too, it might make the lower depths of my own dozen. Not an amazing film, but a sweet non-romance that resists the Hollywood impulse to have Deborah Kerr ignore who she is in that moment

For some reason I find the film strangely fascinating. I've heard it compared unfavorably to The African Queen, (a burgeoning romance set against high adventure in exotic locales), but for most of the film it does manage to avoid a lot of those cliches.

[knives]

I think it is better then African Queen, though I imagine most would ignore my opinion as I consider Huston one of the ten best Hollywood directors of all time and perhaps the best dramatic one even with all of his bumps.

[beamish14]

Does Huston's original screenplay for The Red Badge of Courage still exist? I wish there were more available visuals on the massive
amount of material that was excised. If so, it would be nice to finally have it published.

Regarding Heaven Knows... I'm a huge fan of it. It's amazing how much silence there is in it. Makes an amazing double bill with
Boorman's Hell in the Pacific

[bert96]

I saw "The Dead" a year ago and always wondered why there isn't a good DVD/Bluray release of the film. The Lionsgate DVD is out of print since years and worldwide there is no Bluray release in sight, although the film would be worthy of a Criterion release.

[ando]

I saw "The Dead" a year ago and always wondered why there isn't a good DVD/Bluray release of the film. The Lionsgate DVD is out of print since years and worldwide there is no Bluray release in sight, although the film would be worthy of a Criterion release.

Quite, particularly that lat bit. It’s currently a free streamer on tubi. I just read the Joyce short story and rewatched the Huston film. It’s an admirable treatment. And one my new favorite Dan O’Herlihy turns.

[ando]

1979 City Lights Interview